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Engineering Roller Coaster Lab Calculations
Velocity and Momentum
1. A car with a mass of 1,400 kg is traveling at a speed of 40 m/s. What is its
momentum?
2. A bird is flying north with a mass of 2.5 kg has a momentum of 17.5 kg m/s. At
what velocity is it flying?
3. A 100kg man is running at 5.6 m/s. What is his momentum?
4. Scott McCartney, a US Olympic Ski Team member was going 39 m/s in the
downhill ski race when he lost his balance and fell. He has a mass of 65kg. What
is his momentum?
5. If a 40kg object has a momentum of 400kgm/s, how fast is it traveling?
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6. If an object traveling at 20m/s has a momentum of 800kgms/s, what is the
object’s mass?
Acceleration
7. A car accelerates from a standstill to 60km/hr in 10.0 seconds. What is its
acceleration?
8. A car accelerates from 25 km/hr to 55 km/hr in 30 seconds. What is the
acceleration?
9. A train is accelerating at a rate of 2.0 km/hr. If its initial velocity is 20 km/hr,
what is its velocity after 30 seconds?
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Centripetal Acceleration
10. An astronomer at the equator measures the Doppler shift of sunlight at sunset.
From this, she calculates that Earth’s tangential velocity at the equator is 465 m/s.
The centripetal acceleration at the equator is 3.41E-2 m/s2. Use this data to calculate
Earth’s radius.
11. A waterwheel built in Hamah, Syria, has a radius of 20.0m. If the tangential
velocity at the wheel’s edge is 7.85 m/s, what is the centripetal acceleration of the
wheel?
12. In 1995, Cathy Marsal of France cycled 47.112 km in 1.000 hour. Calculate the
magnitude of the centripetal acceleration of Marsal with respect to Earth’s center.
Neglect Earth’s rotation, and use 6.37E3 km as Earth’s radius.
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Centripetal Force
13. Gregg Reid of Atlanta, Georgia, built a motorcycle that is over 4.5m long and has
a mass of 235 kg. The force that holds Reid and his motorcycle in a circular path
with a radius of 25.0m is 1850N. What is Reid’s tangential speed? Assume Reid’s
mass is 72kg.
14. With an average mass of only 30.0g, the mouse lemur of Madagascar is the
smallest primate on Earth. Suppose this lemur swings on a light vine with a length of
2.4m, so that the tension in the vine at the bottom point of the swing is 0.393N.
What is the lemur’s tangential speed?
15. Pat Kinch used a racing cycle to travel 75.57km/hr. Suppose Kinch moved at this
speed around a circular track. If the combined mass of Kinch and the cycle was
92.0kg and the radius of the track is 3.17km, what was the average centripetal
force?
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Kinetic & Potential Energy
16. What is the kinetic energy of a 3-kilogram ball that is rolling at 2 meters per
second?
17. There is a bell at the top of a tower that is 45 m high. The bell has a mass of 32kg.
Calculate the gravitational potential energy of the bell.
18. You serve a volleyball with a mass of 2.1 kg. The ball leaves your hand with a
speed of 30 m/s. What is the kinetic energy of the ball?
19. A marble is sitting at the top of a ramp that is 2.1 m high. The marble weighs
0.21kg. What is the gravitational potential energy of the marble?